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in solitude, in portland

Portland is an introvert’s paradise. Nothing but rain and street corner cafes with piping hot coffee where you splay a used hardcover copy of Zadie Smith out on the table beside a bar of Woodblock Chocolate and a Field Notes pencil. You take up knitting to keep your hands busy while you read. You wake up early to write to the sound of car tires spinning, screeching on the street outside, drivers wholly unprepared for three days of slowly falling snow flakes. You feel both cliche and old, staying in and knitting in an armchair, never watching the news, lacking the faintest idea of what’s going on in the world and perfectly content yet mildly unsettled with that fact. When the woman at the library tells you about an article on Slate about the snow in Atlanta you ask “it snowed in Atlanta?”

The black hood of a rain jacket induces tunnel vision on the way home from the post office, like a horse wearing blinders being led through water. You feel the newness and the unknown of the city but it doesn’t swallow you up, doesn’t bother you like it did in Brooklyn, where you had to know it to be in it; in Portland, you just have to be. Maybe it’s the city or maybe it’s that you’re older.

Mostly, I’m at a loss of what to say. No lack of things to say, but where to begin, how to begin to say them. I once wrote that the writing life was one of intense solitude. I stand by that, but I now realize that generalization was more specific than I wanted to admit. Even amongst others, I am extremely solitary.

Portland is another step towards that, rather than away. In Portland, I can be anonymous; the luxury of a city, a new city. It’s not so much about starting over as it is about continuing, a deepening of what’s already begun.

3 thoughts on “in solitude, in portland”

i hadnt had a chance to read anything of yours until now but i saw this and it struck me right at home. much of what you say is exactly how i feel. excited to know you made the big leap at going out there as you had intended when last we talked. Look forward to any thoughts, ideas, etc. you can share with me as I make the journey west, too. Cheers to solitude and happy writing!
A.